Babylon Rule Dem…

BOB MARLEY would have been 64 years old today.

This man was amazing for so many reasons. While his posters and calendars adorn the walls of many college dorm rooms belonging to those who know him for songs like “Jammin’,” “3 Little Birds,” and “Could You Be Loved,” I love him even more for his message of resistance against white racism and systematic capitalist oppression. “Slave Driver,” “Burnin’ & Lootin’,” “War,” and other such songs of protest and progressive movement, are what solidfy Robert Nesta Marley as a “timeless” musician in my mind.

Marley was also important because of what he did for his native Jamaica and the “3rd World,” at large. He is the first artist from any “developing” country that has achieved GLOBAL success in a way that only Amerikan or European artists had before him. He is also profoundly responsible for the exposure and spread of the rastafarian religion. His compilation “LEGEND,” album has sold 12,000,000 albums to this day and his works continue to sell well, years after his demise.

Though many people don’t know, Bob Marley attributes a lot of his understanding of the world to seeing life through the lens of a Black man of mixed race:

I don’t have prejudice against himself. My father was a white and my mother was black. Dem call me half-caste or whatever. Me don’t dip on nobody’s side. Me don’t dip on the black man’s side nor the white man’s side. Me dip on God’s side, the one who create me and cause me to come from black and white.

CALL ME CRAZY, but I personally believe there are some things that mixed race folk are forced to notice and think about on a daily basis, that our “full-blood” brothers and sisters are not (and vice-versa).

In the recent film release “I Am Legend,” Will Smith’s character had a (somewhat corny, yet) dope take on why his character (a soldier/scientist trying to save the world from a vampire-virus) loved Marley so much. He says: “Marley’s philosphy was much like a virologist. He believed that he could CURE racism and hatred by INJECTING love into people through his music. Even when gunmen came and shot him down in his own home, he walked up onto the stage during a PEACE Concert the very next day…”

Theres a natural mystic blowing through the air / If you listen carefully now you will hear. / This could be the first trumpet, might as well be the last / Many more will have to suffer, / Many more will have to die - dont ask me why.

Things are not the way they used to be, / I wont tell no lie / One and all have to face reality now. / Though Ive tried to find the answer to all the questions they ask. / Though I know its impossible to go livin through the past - Dont tell no lie.

-Natural Mystic

Happy Birthday Robert Marley. Thank you for always “Jammin’” even though you lived in “War.”

Jah Bless,
Senbei